Photographer's Note

Downtown Toronto, young girl takes her two large dogs, boxer and bullmastiff (I understand that from the picture it's hard to tell that she has two dogs with her, you will have to trust me on that) for a walk. Reality of big cities is that on many occasions poeple, especially females don't always feel secure when walking alone, having a large dog is definetely a good visual crime deterrent.

I wish I had a picture where she is half a meter ahead so her head doesn't touch the building, and have the car driving on the right at the same time.

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Inspired by our own Viviane Faguay and a magnum photographer Elliott Erwitt I have finally decided to take a stab at combining my two passions, dogs and photography.

In my attempts I will not try to show pictures of dogs, but will try to present pictures with dogs in them.

In Northern America dogs are a big part of our society, they aren't just dogs or animals, they are companions and family members. Many of them lead a wonderfull life as part of a family, taking part in many of our activities, in some cases this is taken to the extreme and they are treated like barbie dolls wearing designer clothes or having their fur coloured. There is also other extreme where thousands of them are abused, neglected, some used for dog fighting or other criminal activities, thousands are euthanized in shelters each year simply because there is noone to claim them. On one hand there is a small group of hobby breeders trying to produce the best specimen possible for a breed, on the other hands we have some businesses mass produce them just like chickens to have them sold in petshops.

I think this looks really good. YOur conversion to b&w is excellent and I like how your subject does stand out from the buildings behind her. I think a slightly faster shutter would work here, keeping some blur, but leaving just a little more detail. Nice shot.

Hey Peter, that's a coincidence. ust saw a similar pic yesterday while searching my books for a special pic. I think, it's been by Chris Coe..., the old building in contrast to the concrete and steel ones, the Toronto tower in the background.
Great capture of a daily street scene, exactly the right dose of blur suggesting motion and the city's alive. Well done, presenting as b&w to abstract the dog-walk.

I love the high contrast BW! I like the blur too, but I do think it's a bit much. How did you manage the 1/10 second anyway? Did you have a tripod? On my Oly, I can never get a clean handheld shot under 1/50th. I also agree with you that one step more would have been better. Damn that delay time on the prosumer cams eh?

Very nice BW. Somehow I feel I’m never able to get these contrasts and brightness settings although I like them a lot… Regarding the composition I like the blurred effect and I agree with she being a bit ahead closer to the border. Have you thought in taking sequential shots in these situations? If there’s not a big time gap between pressing the shutter and the camera taking the photo it will be easy for you to take the photo you’ve intended and have a few other shots which will give options in the time of selecting the best one.

I missed this one, sorry, because it's very nice one. I especially like the frozen mouvement of the girl against that sharply "drawn" background. It really likes like it's drawn with heavy black pencils. And it makes the whole composition looking like a clever collage. Just great!

Amitiés - Viviane

* The whole "dog serie" I saw in your theme is excellent, especially the ones you made in B&W - and Isabelle and Animesh's ones are good addings.